by T D Raufson
The three representatives from the western hemisphere were agreeing with Lung. They seemed charmed by his words. Bida sat with his arms folded. The Australian watched with very little expression. The Greenland representative also watched but seemed to take no side. So, he had a split. How did he repair it? How did he bring them all together?
“Have you not noticed, my peers, the humans have not waited as our honored Asian delegate suggests we should? As soon as we appeared, they became aggressive. You all have seen the news and read of their aggressive stances they have taken with the partials who emerged with us. Hunt squads search even now for signs of partials. Where do they turn next? What keeps them from hunting us?”
The Asian dropped his head with a shake. Nethliast felt his anger rise. The old fool was so in love with the humans. He was possibly the exact opposite of Nethliast, reminding him of Melissa. He almost wanted to ask the ancient wyrm if he had already talked to her. He stole a glance at the North American who was listening still. It wasn’t all lost. There had been more killings in Oregon where the North American dragons were mostly situated.
“If we were not as discrete as we have been, they would be hunting us to our lairs and killing our younglings. They are already killing anything that resembles a dragon,” Nethliast continued.
“And yet, not a single dragon has been killed. You are misled and you mislead, Nethliast. The people of Asia are not attacking dragons. They have been beset by Naga, and those they have killed because they do nothing but evil. All of the other deaths recorded have been of abominations of dragon kind. There has not been a single dragon attacked since we emerged.”
“I was attacked,” Melissa’s father responded. He had been silent until this. Nethliast was relieved he had chosen to speak, but he wished it had been one of the others. This was turning very one-sided. “As I have flown or as I have fed. Can any of you say that you have moved freely without being molested?”
Several of the others nodded at what he said.
“There is an expectation of respect we have, is there not?” Valdiest added. His previous silence made his words stronger. “Can we allow them to treat us like errant children? I understand that we want to live in peace with them. And, Lung, you have a history with the Asian humans that cannot be questioned. We should all be so lucky.” The Asian nodded at Valdiest’s words. “But, we are not. Our histories with the humans are spotted at best, and their lack of respect at this juncture is indicative of how they have treated us in the past.”
Again, Lung dropped his head. “Do you not see, Valdiest, that our histories do not match our memories and some painful magic hides them from us? We should focus on discovering what magic wishes to obscure our memories and allows us to distrust humans so readily. We cannot act against humans based on those flawed memories, and you cannot hold this generation responsible for unproven slights to your honor from over a dragon’s age ago. We have been absent from the land that long, and it has moved on without us. We must be patient and careful if we wish to reclaim the places of honor we held back then. We must work with those who now rule this world.”
Valdiest did not respond to his comments but let the council think on them. It was clear to Nethliast that he was allowing them too much time to think. He needed them angry and reactive. He started to speak, but Bida spoke first.
“I have no use for humans, except as food. My young hunger because of how things have changed. I say we eliminate them. They are neither useful nor trustworthy, and they are the reason we find ourselves in this situation. I know enough of my history with them to know how to lead my kind.”
The Australian was nodding approval. The North and South Americans were still not committed to either direction.
“I will not destroy centuries of good relations over this,” one of the South Americans responded while the other nodded. Although they were of two different races of dragon, their situation was very similar. “My history is written in stone across the continent for all who look to see. All I must do is appear at one of their ancient cities, and I will have the respect you all crave.” He nodded to Valdiest. “What course would you advise me? Should I destroy that by violently subjugating them?”
“I do not have that luxury, anymore, it seems,” the North American spoke in response. “The people who once honored me are gone. I go to the ancient places, and they are empty. I listen for the crying voices that once filled the night, and they are silent. Those who occupy my lands now are not the ones I once knew.” He looked down at his lap, shaking his head.
“You see,” Nethliast took the opportunity to strike, “history is not all we have to consider. We must look at them now. Compare what we see to what we remember. Are they willing to let us back into their lives now that they have been rid of us for—for over a thousand years?” He didn’t believe the number Lung Wy Li had provided, but he was not going to disrespect him openly. “They are arrogant, and they have no place for us. They are worse than our memories tell us they ever were. I do not have to delve into my memories to know that. The evidence is quite apparent on the very streets about us.”
“They have no place for you.” Lung answered. “My acceptance is written into the history of the Asian people. The current government may resist us because we scare them, but the people love us because of our absence and our legend. There have been no attacks on a single Asian dragon in Asia.”
“But what of my kind in Asia? Have there not been attacks?” Nethliast was not going to surrender to this.
“Yes,” the Asian answered flatly, “but your kind is not welcomed in Asia as peaceful and helpful. In fact, our legends draw you as the great invading evil, but I am not here today calling for your destruction as you are the humans. I have more evidence of how European dragons have dealt with humans in the past. Your kind is perceived as dangerous wherever you are, and from what I am seeing today, you have earned that.”
Valdiest stood for the first time. “We are not here for that. I find your comments most insulting.” Wy Li nodded and bowed his head to Valdiest in a sign of humility and apology. “We must be unified. We need to show a united front.”
“You are not even united among yourselves.” The Asian dragon waved his hand around the table and then pointed to Valdiest. “Which of you is really in charge, Valdiest? You speak wisely and when it is necessary, but this child among us speaks without control or wisdom. Is he your guard? Is he your child? Or, forgive me my friend, is he your superior? Of all of the delegations, yours is the only one with two representatives at the table. My followers know their place, as do my young.” Lung nodded to the four men who watched the others from around the room. “You will note that they have held their tongues. I know their opinions, but they know their place as should your underling.”
Nethliast hissed, a truly dragon characteristic that seemed odd coming from his human form.
“You must calm yourself,” an invisible voice behind him whispered. “He’s baiting you. He wants this conflict.”
The closest guard appeared again at the side of his now standing leader. “I see that differing opinions are not welcome here. Valdiest, when you want to hold a true council, and when you have control of your young, contact me. I will gladly meet with you, my old friend.” Wy Li bowed very deeply to him and started to turn away, but stopped. “One thing, before I go, have any of you considered that humans did not have the magic to do what you say they did? Not even amongst the most powerful of their wizards could they ever cast a spell to entrap us all. You are not thinking.” The old man tapped his bald skull and vanished along with his guards.
July 16 – 1130 EDT – Kennesaw, Georgia
Elaine tossed her high school annual onto the stack of books she was not taking with her to college. She did not intend to remember any of the people she had spent four years avoiding. The jests and insults in gym and in the halls had never stopped. Her mother, who should have helped her deal with the situation, had told her that everything would be fine once she
was on campus at Georgia Tech. Elaine never really wanted to go to Georgia Tech. She wanted to write. She wanted to be creative some other way. She didn’t want to surrender and become the clone of her mother the engineer. Elaine looked at the stacks again. Neither of them really mattered as she walked down the gray path to her corporate prison; they both represented some level of surrender to her mother’s master plan.
She had applied to MIT as a threat. She had never expected them to accept her, and the acceptance letter she had left on the kitchen table for a week had really tweaked her mother. She had immediately forbidden her to send in the completed application. Elaine hung it on the mirror in her room in protest as she contemplated her next move. Two days ago while staring at it and thinking over her situation the edges had burst into flame. She had barely been able to save the document, and she had cried for an hour from the shock of the event. She was still struggling to explain what had caused the fire. She hadn’t hung it back up because she couldn’t explain why it was charred, and her mother saw that as a victory in the career battle.
Her mother’s graduation-gift-peace-offering, a new Apple-Android Typhoon was on her nightstand charging. The newest tablet had set her mom back a bit, but it represented everything her mother wanted her to be. It irritated Elaine that she actually liked it and used it. Her mother had not ignored the fact that she had downloaded every novel her favorite author had ever written to it either. Attempting to out-manipulate her mother with her own tricks continued to fail, and nothing she did made her listen. She didn’t want to be an engineer, no matter what the tests said.
The temperature in the room suddenly dropped, and Elaine sighed loudly. To have to put on a sweater in the middle of the summer was ridiculous. She didn’t understand why her mother had started messing with the thermostat this week or what was wrong with the air conditioner.
She had to come up with a plan. If she didn’t figure out something, soon, she would be a freshman engineer on her way to becoming her mother. She felt a jolt at the back of her neck about that and swore sparks flashed around her head. She sat back and stared at the sleeve of the sweater. She could feel the anger about her situation pulsing in her head and looked up at herself in the mirror. She inhaled deeply while consciously calming herself and suddenly realized there was something about that pattern of events.
The drop in temperature, the sparks, the jolt; she looked around the room for wisps of smoke or something on fire and found it in the stack of things she planned on leaving. The edge of the junior engineering award she won last year was alight and threatening to ignite the entire stack. Tears filled her eyes as she grabbed the sheet of paper and flung it into the garbage can where it smoldered, mocking her.
A week ago she could have enjoyed the anger fest at her mother’s expense, but now she had to be careful not to catch the room on fire. Avoiding further conflagration, she inhaled—held—and then released her breath slowly. Signs of her anger stood out to her around the room. The blackened hole in the pair of shorts her mother had found in the wash, the MIT application, the portrait of her absent father, the classic Macintosh in the corner and the banner her mother had bought her at Georgia Tech; the list was growing and her mother was oblivious to the real problem, as always. She thought her daughter was trying and failing to hide a smoking habit.
How did you explain the fact that you started fires like something out of an old Steven King thriller from the 80’s to anyone, much less your engineer mother that never listened to you?
Elaine needed to think about something less irritating and glanced at her image in the mirror. She had abandoned the glasses just before graduation and decided she didn’t look nearly so engineer once she could see her face. Now she only had to deal with the hair. Red was her color; there was nothing she could do about that, but she didn’t have to keep it long. She had hidden behind it through high school, but college was a different story. In a flurry of hands and bobby-pins she rolled it up into a bun, out of her way. She would decide what else to do with it closer to September.
While she had been putting up her hair, the room had warmed again. She could take off the sweater, but her mother was coming up the stairs so she left it on. She hoped she could control herself enough that she didn’t toast her mother in her own bedroom.
There was a knock at the door, and she turned to face it, controlling her breath.
“Come in.” Her mother had been up every day since she had found the shorts and had seen the portrait with the charred hole where her father’s head had been. It was a little creepy to suddenly have her attention even though she still wasn’t listening. She would smell the burnt paper, there was no avoiding it, so Elaine tried to calm herself even more as the door swung open. When her mother appeared around the corner, Elaine knew exactly what she was not doing with her hair. She grabbed the bun and roughly ripped it away from the pins she had used to hold it in place. She shook her head to release the hair and it fell around her face like an unruly and completely disorganized mass. Her mother’s neutral face quickly became a frown and with a sigh, she held out a book-sized express mail box.
“The mailman just delivered this. Were you expecting something?” She sniffed the air and looked around the room.
“No, maybe it’s from MIT,” her answer snapped her mother’s head around to face her and obliterated any desire to find the odor in the room. Elaine was a little ashamed of herself for manipulating her mother. “Let’s see.” She took the box and opened the flaps with a fingernail file from her dresser.
Inside, lying on top of a leather-wrapped box was another envelope that was almost translucent. It looked like thin parchment paper, but it felt different. It felt alive. She turned the curious envelope over and inhaled sharply. The back flap, sealed with a dollop of black wax, had a dragon signet seal pressed into it. The seal was the same as the mark on every one of her favorite author’s books. She sat down on the bed and stared at it.
“Oh, dear God, not that silliness again.” Her mother turned a darker red than normal and left the room. The door banged closed as hard as she could slam it, but even that caused nothing more than a disturbance in the room’s pressure and a loud thunk. Elaine smiled at how well her love of fantasy novels and her relationship with one particular author never failed to send her mother storming away from her. She turned her attention back to the letter and felt relaxed for the first time all day, even though the pain of Helena Schwendemann’s recent death had not really numbed yet.
It had been months since she had last talked to her, and it had been tough when they had announced her death. There was no way she could have explained the trip to Chattanooga for the funeral, so she had not been able to go. She still blamed her mother for that, too. So it was with mixed feelings of sadness and anger that she looked at the envelope.
She never expected last year, when she was standing in the line at the local Fan Convention dressed in red satin and painted on scales, that she would become so close to the woman whose books had become her only refuge. She had sent Helena an e-mail at her fan-mail account the month before the convention and included some suggestions she had been thinking about based on some dreams she had been having, but she never expected the greeting she had received when she walked to the autograph table. Helena had recognized her name and brought her around to sit next to her as she completed the autograph session. The addictively energetic and fun woman had told Elaine she was not going to let her get away now that she had found her. They talked as if they had been friends for years while other fans filed past with stacks of books. After dinner and long conversations about her dreams, they had each left to go their own ways, agreeing to stay in touch.
That same night, excited by the meeting, Elaine had dreamed a disturbing and violent dream about a dragon ceremony at an icy, mountaintop castle. When she had calmed down from the excitement of the dream, she had written down the details and sent them to Helena. Who else could possibly appreciate it? That had sealed their friendship. Elai
ne had hidden it from her mother, who thought she was president of some fan club. Elaine’s preoccupation with the silly fiction was bad enough, but had her mother known the truth she would have done something to stop her from talking with her hero.
Elaine closed her eyes to the tears and bunched up her shoulders before she looked at the letter again. What could it be?
Elaine pulled a ruler out of a box and slid it under the wax seal. With a little pressure, the seal released the parchment, but remained whole. She felt a trill of excitement and sadness. This was likely the last letter her friend had written her. It was such a fancy affair; it had to be a goodbye. Elaine was not sure she could stand that. They had seemed to grow as close as friends could be over e-mail and social networks. Helena lived a couple hours north of Atlanta, but Elaine had been finishing her senior year. There had been no time for them to meet. With all of the excitement of graduation, Elaine had not realized they had stopped talking until Helena’s death. She had not even known she had been sick.
In the announcement, the publishers had also introduced a new book that Helena had never hinted she was working on. A selfish part of Elaine was thrilled about a new book and equally agitated that it wasn’t finished. The publisher had announced a plan to find someone to help complete it so her last novel could be published. Looking at the envelope and the box, Elaine entertained a quick fantasy that it was an answer to her dream. What if it was an invitation from the publishers to help? She knew that was unlikely, but a young dreamer just out of high school could imagine such wonderful fantasies
She opened the hand-folded envelope and removed the letter. The note was penned on the same material as the envelope. In the past, they had communicated online, and any time she had received a letter, it had been on a basic letterhead. Elaine could not suppress the feeling that this letter was very important. Had Helena left her something in her will? Elaine giggled at the silliness of that idea. The impossible ideas just wouldn’t stop. She read the note several times as she allowed the meaning to settle in her head.